I have been a RHP tenant for since 2010 after beco...

I have been a RHP tenant for since 2010 after becoming disabled. I previously worked in and managed building trades. RHP is a very average housing association where the average is not very good at all.

The building repairs operatives routinely (occasionally not) cut corners and seem to have no sense of pride in their work (that's a hard way to work). I believe they are not supervised well and encouraged to cut corners for profit. Much of the work I have seen is shoddy and would not be accepted in the private sector. There is also an air of contempt for tenants coming from some of the building supervisors I have met. When I asked one of them if the poor work they had done in my kitchen would have been acceptable in his own home he replied "No, but I do not live in social housing".

To complain or reason with RHP is like trying to converse with a blancmange. There is a line in the film The Shawshank Redemption where the main character says to the warden "how can you be so obtuse?" Anytime I hear that I think of David Done and his team. They get paid the same to go round in circles, evasively passing you round different people. One person in my block has built an extension, erected walk-in sheds and landscaped the communal gardens around her own and encroaching into other peoples areas with no problem. Yet others in the same block are refused permission to install their own rotary washing line. If you press them on this or anything else the responses become evasive or dishonest.

Piles of rubbish, broken chest of drawers, car tyre, etc. sat for many months in the small communal car park. After around 7 months I asked why it had not been removed despite allegedly having a visiting caretaking/grounds/gardening staff and RHP housing staff visiting on multiple occasions. The response was 'we rely upon tenants to report these issues'. If it was at the entrance to their nice modern offices in Teddington, CEO David Done would make sure it was gone pretty quickly.

I have just found out why for the last seven years I have been unable to control the temperature of the hot water or radiators in my property. Because their unsupervised contractor fitted an overpowered boiler which cannot downscale its output to a smaller property. I am told not to hold my breath that RHP will do anything about it - because it is still only a seven year old boiler. The boiler was installed without anticorrosive additive. When a bathroom radiator needed replacing I asked if they could put one with a bit more output. They put one in with four times the output of the previous. Anyone want a sauna, let me know.

They have gardeners that every year piled soil against the bottom of boundary wooden fencing and when I emailed RHP to point out this would cause rot over time someone knocked on my door rather irate saying I should have brought the matter up with him and not RHP. Of course someone continued doing it annually and the fence has now rotted away at the bottom.

The above represents about 5% of my negative experience with RHP.

In their first 10 years of a probationary period as a housing association RHP employees had their photos and job titles displayed on their website. Although often ineffective, you did at least know the individual to contact and to keep contacting. Since their probationary period (as a housing association) has ended, RHP has withdrawn to hide behind a website and a single customer service email address. No visible dedicated housing officers. You'll likely get a different person every time you try to follow up about the same thing. You probably will not know their job title or what their responsibility or competence is. RHP exists for and is increasingly built around the comfort and convenience of David Done and his team and not tenants (nor the tradesmen/manual workers). They appear to be primarily concerned with their public image, their self reported performance statistics and HR appeal - as long as the frontage looks okay to the outside world the residents remain incidental.